Congressional Oversight Research Articles

Making Sense of the Census: It's Political

With “Partisan Politics at Work,” Anderson and Fienberg continue their spirited, if misleading, defense of the plan to statistically adjust the census count. Unfortunately, their argument in favor of making the adjustments misses the mark and they gloss over some of the most serious of the evidence presented against the methods of adjustment. Rather, they are more interested in trying to remove politics from an inherently political process, which I maintain is an unrealistic goal. I conclude my portion of this exchange by reiterating my position that statistically adjusting the census totals will, at best, provide numbers that are no better than those of a traditional headcount; at worst, doing so may provide very inaccurate data.At the end of their second article, Anderson and Fienberg plead for “legislation to insulate the Census Bureau from efforts at political manipulation and restore to it the authority to manage the technical details of how to fulfill the constitutional mandate for a census.” I do not share these wishes. Why does the federal bureaucracy need any more protection from congressional oversight than it already enjoys? Certainly, Census Bureau officials have more technical expertise and they are more readily able to judge whether a particular sampling plan is sound than are the collective members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the Bureau remains the fiduciary for Congress. Erecting barriers between the two groups is not a solution to any identifiable problem.

Intelligence: from secrets to policy

Table of Contents Preface Chapter 1. Introduction - What Is Intelligence? Why Do We Have Intelligence Agencies? What Is Intelligence About? Chapter 2. The Development Of U.S. Intelligence Major Themes Major Historical Developments A Final Note Chapter 3. The U.S. Intelligence Community Alternative Ways of Looking at the Intelligence Community The Many Different Intelligence Communities Intelligence Community Relationships that Matter The Intelligence Budget Process Chapter 4. The Intelligence Process - A Macro Look: Who Does What For Whom? Requirements Collection Processing and Exploitation Analysis and Production Dissemination and Consumption Feedback Thinking About the Intelligence Process Chapter 5. Collection And The Collection Disciplines Overarching Themes The Collection Disciplines: Strengths and Weaknesses Collection - Conclusion Chapter 6. Analysis Major Themes Analytical Issues Intelligence Analysis: An Assessment Chapter 7. Counter Intelligence Internal Safeguards External Indicators and Counterespionage Problems in Counter intelligence Chapter 8. Covert Action The Decision-making Process The Range of Covert Action Issues in Covert Action Assessing Covert Action Chapter 9. The Role Of The Policymaker The Nature of the National Security Policy Process in the U.S. Government Who Wants What? The Intelligence Process: Policy and Intelligence Chapter 10. Oversight And Accountability Executive Oversight Issues Congressional Oversight Issues in Congressional Oversight Internal Dynamics of Congressional Oversight of Intelligence Conclusion Chapter 11. The Legacy Of The Cold War The Primacy of the Soviet Issue The Emphasis on Soviet Military Capabilities The Emphasis on Statistical Intelligence The Intelligence Record - Collapse of the Soviet Union Conclusion - Intelligence and the Soviet Problem Chapter 12. The New Intelligence Agenda U.S. National Security Policy after the Cold War Intelligence and the New Priorities Conclusion Chapter 13. Ethical And Moral Issues In Intelligence General Moral Questions Issues Related to Collection and Covert Action Analysis-related Issues The Media Conclusion Chapter 14. Intelligence Reform The Purpose of Reform Issues in Intelligence Reform Conclusion Chapter 15. Foreign Intelligence Services Britain China France Israel Russia Conclusion Appendix 1 Additional Bibliographic Citations and Websites Appendix 2 Major Intelligence Reviews of Proposals Author Index Subject Index

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board's first decade

Concern over the safety of the United States' defense nuclear reactors in the late 1980s led to congressional creation of an independent oversight board. The Defense Nuclear Facility Safeties Board (DNFSB) is responsible for overseeing safety issues at the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear facilities and issuing recommendations on operations and safety at these facilities, which include South Carolina's Savannah River Site, Texas' Pantex facility, Colorado's Rocky Flats Depot, and others. This article provides an historical overview of the DNFSB's first decade and discusses its relationship and interaction with the Department of Energy and congressional oversight committees as well as the recommendations it has issued on nuclear safety. An assessment of DNFSB's future prospects concludes the article.

Commentary: Monitoring Expanded Health Insurance for Children: Challenges and Opportunities

Enacted in 1997 as Title XXI of the Social Security Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) offers significant potential for expanding health insurance for children and improving their access to care.1 According to the states, nearly 2 million children were enrolled by October 1999.2 Ultimately, 3 million uninsured children in low-income families, or about one third of all US uninsured children, could eventually gain coverage under SCHIP.3 Moreover, SCHIP outreach efforts may also lead to increased enrollment levels of children already eligible for Medicaid. More than 2 years have now passed since enactment of the program and many of the components needed to monitor the program are now in place. These include a new template to assist states in meeting federal reporting requirements, an external evaluation funded by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), several SCHIP research projects funded through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The enactment of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1999 further enhances the prospects for a comprehensive approach to monitoring. This act, incorporated in one of the final appropriations bills for fiscal year 2000 (Public Law 106-113), not only included new appropriations for data collection and evaluation as indicated above, but also expands Congressional oversight by specifying periodic audits by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services combined with monitoring reports from the General Accounting Office to assess progress in reducing the number of uninsured low-income children. The legislation also directs the federal Department of Health and Human Services to take an active role in coordinating and consolidating data and reports regarding children's health. In this commentary, we outline several elements of a comprehensive national monitoring program and discuss how these new data collection and evaluation initiatives fit within this …

Measles, MMR, and autism: the confusion continues

The WHO estimated the number of measles cases for 1998 as 30 million worldwide with 888 000 measles-related deaths. In developing countries about 10% of all deaths in children under 5 years are measles related. Sad figures considering that measles has been a vaccine-preventable disease for more than three decades. In 1990, the World Summit for Children adopted a goal of vaccinating 90% of children by 2000; despite this undertaking, global coverage actually declined from 79% in 1997 to 72% in 1998. Vaccine coverage varies widely, and 16 countries reported coverage below 50% in 1998. One such country is Afghanistan, where a measles epidemic is now raging with many deaths (see p 1439). In more-developed countries, measles is often regarded, erroneously, as a mild disease-a view belied by the fact that in the USA, in a measles outbreak of about 55 000 cases from 1989 to 1991, over 120 people died. Complications include bronchopneumonia, diarrhoea, encephalitis, and subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), which leads to death and occurs in 1 out of 8000 children who become infected with measles before their second birthday. SSPE cases have fallen dramatically since the introduction of measles vaccine. A huge blow to the efforts of measles eradication was dealt when 2 years ago, at a press conference, Andrew Wakefield from the Royal Free Hospital, UK, argued that because of uncertainty about its safety, the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine should be withdrawn and the components given separately. He made this claim—not shared by his coinvestigators—on the grounds that there was an association between autism and intestinal abnormalities in 12 children and a possible relation—as recalled by some parents—with MMR vaccination (Lancet 1998; 351: 637–41). Well-founded criticisms of both the study and its interpretation by Wakefield followed, and a different research group from the same institution published epidemiological evidence contradicting this alleged association (Lancet 1999; 353: 2026–29). On April 3, a report from a subgroup of the British Medical Research Council, led by Alan McGregor of King's College London, concluded that “between March, 1998, and September, 1999, there had been no new evidence to suggest a causal link between MMR and inflammatory bowel disease/ autism”. In a new twist, Wakefield's crusade fuelled further anxiety among parents when he and John O'Leary, director of pathology at Coombe Women's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, presented unpublished data to the US Senate's congressional oversight committee in Washington on April 6. The hearing was called by the chairman, Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, whose grandson has autism and visited the Royal Free Hospital in November last year. At the hearing, six parents of children with autism gave moving testimonies of their children's illness. Scientific evidence was presented by six chosen “experts”. According to Wakefield's testimony, he has now studied more than 150 children with “autistic enterocolitis”—an unproven association had become a disease—and a detailed analysis of the first 60 cases is to be published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology later this year. Wakefield presented uninterpretable fragments of results only and concentrated on refuting studies that had contradicted his findings. His conclusions were surprisingly non-committal: “the virological data indicate that this may be measles virus in some children”; he added that it would be imprudent to interpret the temporal relationship with MMR as a chance finding, in the absence of thorough investigation. O'Leary explained that gut-biopsy material from 24 of 25 children with autism was positive for measles virus compared with one of 15 controls, and that this material was presented to him by Wakefield using “blinded protocols”. Since the controls are not further described and the details of these findings remain unpublished, this evidence raises far more questions than it answers. Autism is a poorly understood neurodevelopmental-disease spectrum with a heart-breaking personal story behind every case. But parents of such children have not been served well by these latest claims made well beyond the publically available evidence. A congressional hearing, like a press conference, is no place to make controversial scientific assessments. And if scientists question the safety of vaccines without making their evidence fully transparent, harm will be done to many more children than they purport to protect.

Agency rulemaking, political influences, regulation, and industry compliance

This article empirically examines the impact of congressional oversight and agency rulemaking on firm compliance behavior in FDA-regulated industries. Congressional oversight hearings provide signals to firms about future changes in regulatory enforcement strategies. Agency rulemaking influences firms' incentives to comply with regulation because firms must invest significant resources to keep up with changing agency policy. This analysis uses three-stage least squares to simultaneously estimate both the numbers of FDA inspections and industry violators between 1972 and 1994. Results show that congressional oversight deters industry noncompliance. The effect of agency rulemaking on noncompliance differs between industries. For instance, an increasing stock of human drug rules has raised compliance among drug firms because newer more, cost-effective rules have replaced older, more costly rules. In contrast, the increasing stock of medical device rules has reduced industry compliance among device firms because these rules have increased the complexity and the scope of regulation. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

Caution! NRC as Protector of Worker Health and Safety at Nuclear Power Plants

Congress may soon face a decision about what agency will take responsibility for worker and facility safety at Department of Energy (DOE) sites as the DOE moves to external regulation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) occupies a prominent place on the short list of candidates. Thus, an examination of the NRC's historical record on health and safety, in particular, its record in protecting workers, is warranted. This look at the record shows that the NRC does not adopt a strong regulatory stance; exposure standards for workers have not changed despite evidence of harmful effects at low doses of radiation exposure; record-keeping and worker monitoring are lax; the NRC is blind to internal cultural problems; it appears more concerned about its public image than about entrenched problems; it is too lenient to the industry it is supposed to regulate. The NRC's history of recent problems has caused some critics to call for Congressional hearings or additional oversight of the agency.

Barr offers congressional oversight amendment on ECHELON

On 13 May 1999, Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr successfully introduced an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act that would require the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the CIA to provide to the Congress oversight information on America's international eavesdropping of telecommunications. Within 60 days of the amended Bill's enactment a report must be made to Congress setting forth the legal basis and procedures whereby the intelligence community gathers communications intelligence. The amendment is specifically directed at the international communications surveillance system known as Project ECHELON.

Bank Supervision and the Limits of Political Influence over Bureaucracy

The relationship between elected officials and unelected bureaucrats is one of recurring interest to students of government. It is widely asserted (albeit incorrectly, see Rabin and Bowman, 1998; Svara, 1998) that the first generation of administration scholars (e.g., Wilson, 1887; Goodnow, 1900) believed that bureaucrats could and should be absolutely controlled by elected officials. Politicians made policy, and civil servants applied their neutral, nonpartisan expertise to carry out the wishes of their elected superiors in the most efficient manner possible. This politics/administration dichotomy, however, later gave way to decidedly less optimistic theories about the ability of elected officials to the bureaucracy. According to this literature, bureaucrats enjoyed considerable, if not almost complete, independence from the macropolitical system. Congress as a whole, the president, and appointed officials played minor roles, at best, in the day-to-day operations of the bureaucracy (Cater, 1964; Freeman, 1965; McConnell, 1966). Moreover, bureaucrats were primarily interested in maximizing their budgets (Downs, 1967; Niskanen, 1971; 1975), and they possessed numerous advantages (e.g., longevity, superior information and expertise, civil service protections, and over the flow of information) relative to elected officials such that they had substantial discretion to pursue their own interests (Redford, 1969; Rourke, 1976; Heclo, 1977; Loci, 1979). Meanwhile, the literature on Congress argued that the members of that institution were more concerned with satisfying their electoral constituencies than with monitoring the bureaucracy. Congressional oversight, where it occurred, was criticized as uncoordinated, episodic, ad hoc, and ineffectual (Bibby and Davidson, 1972; Derthick, 1990; Dodd and Schott, 1979; Ogul, 1976; Scher, 1960; Sundquist, 1981). Thus the policy process had come to be dominated by an iron triangle of bureaucrats, interest groups, and congressional subcommittees that generated policies that benefitted themselves and ignored the concerns of the at large (Lowi, 1979; McConnell, 1966; see also, Ripley and Franklin, 1991). By the 1980s, however, theories of political of the bureaucracy had come almost full circle, back to a view that espoused great faith in the ability of political officials to the bureaucracy. A growing body of theoretical and empirical research--much of it grounded in the principal-agent theory of political/bureaucratic relations--claimed to demonstrate numerous instances of effective political of the bureaucracy (e.g., Moe, 1984; Wood and Waterman, 1991). According to this public literature, methods of included the creation of carefully structured procedural and reporting requirements, direct intervention with an administrative agency, or the granting of legal standing to select interest groups. At the same time, a number of empirical studies found that agency outputs were associated with such factors as the activities of oversight committees, the political ideology of the oversight committees, the shared powers of political appointments and the budget, the ideology of the president, and court decisions. (For a good review of the choice literature referenced above, see Bendor, 1990; Wood and Waterman, 1991; Worsham, Ringquist, and Eisner, 1997.) The empirical evidence for political of the bureaucracy appeared so robust that Wood and Waterman (1991, 822) concluded, We believe this evidence for active political is so strong that controversy should now end over whether political occurs. Future research should turn toward exploring the determinants of political control (emphasis in the original). A final explanation for political/bureaucratic relations is the so-called bureaucratic culture model, which assumes that bureaucrats possess substantial policy-making discretion, and that they use this discretion in a manner that best meets their prior construction of what good policy should look like. …

Politics, Bureaucracy, and Farm Credit

A central issue in public administration is the conflict between democracy and the bureaucratic demands of governance (Redford, 1969). The predominant view in the literature is that bureaucracy is best subjected to political control through overhead democracy where elected politicians (usually Congress or the president) use a variety of hierarchical controls to influence the policy activities of bureaucrats. Various models are commonly used to explore these relationships with the principal-agent model predominating. Within this context McCubbins and Schwartz (1984) have suggested using the metaphors of and to explain legislative oversight. In this paper we focus on farm credit policy and suggest three points for consideration. First, another type of oversight suggested by Khademian (1995), bottom-line governance, best explains the oversight relationship with respect to farm credit policy. Second, bottom-line governance and the principal-agent approach are variations of overhead democracy rather than distinctive governing phenomena. Third, a third metaphor, that of a detector, enhances our understanding of bottom-line governance. We focus on two major distributive policy issues relating to agricultural debt policy: the acquisition of debt and the institutions that possess that debt. Re-examining the relationships between bureaucracy and political institutions in the area of agricultural credit is worthwhile for four reasons. First, the characteristics of this policy area differ from those assumed by the predominant theory, the principal-agent model. Second, these characteristics generate a different set of relationships that can best be described as bottom-line oversight (Khademian, 1995; Behn, 1992). In such circumstances bureaucracies are given vast discretion but held to a specific performance standard that is relatively easy to measure even if the day-to-day operations of the bureaucracy are not. Third, such policy areas encourage a different style of congressional oversight. Here is where we add smoke alarms to police patrol and fire alarm oversight. Fourth, agricultural credit policy is important in its own right. The food and fiber industries are economically powerful (adding $800 billion in value to the U.S. gross domestic product annually) and politically powerful (Browne, 1988; Jones, 1961; Talbot and Hadwiger, 1968; Tweeten, 1979; Ulrich, 1989). Agricultural debt totals approximately $140 billion dollars with about two-fifths of the total held by U.S. government-sponsored enterprises. Theory A fundamental tenet of democratic theory is that public policy should reflect a direct link between the governed and the governors; that is, public policy should be made by officials who are accountable to the people. Thus, a direct relationship is needed between unelected bureaucrats, who may exercise policy control, and the elected representatives of the people. Not surprisingly, research into the control of bureaucracies by political institutions is a growth industry (Moe, 1982; 1985; Scholz and Wei, 1986; Wood, 1988; Aberbach, 1990; Wood and Anderson, 1993; Wood and Waterman, 1991; 1994; Woolley, 1993). Much of this research uses the principal-agent model. Principal-agent models assume that bureaucrats and politicians disagree over the goals and means of public policy and, further, that political control over the bureaucrats is made more difficult because bureaucrats have access to policy-relevant information that politicians do not (Moe, 1985, 1098). In this context of goal conflict and information asymmetry, political principals are hypothesized to control bureaucratic agencies through a combination of monitoring, dispensing rewards, and meting out punishments. The research generally investigates this relationship by analyzing how bureaucratic outputs respond to changes in presidential administrations, changes in congressional partisanship or ideology, or changes brought about by periodic political events. …

A Historical guide to the U.S. government

Beginning with George Washington's 1816 presidential staff of three, the executive branch of the U.S. federal government has undergone a tremendous transformation. Today it is the largest institution in the world, employing over 3.1 million people, with an annual budget of over $1.5 trillion. A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government chronicles its growth from its modest beginnings to its present state. Focusing on the federal executive branch and its constituent departments, agencies, commissions, and committees, the guide offers 180 historical accounts for each of these organizational entities. It addresses Congress and the Judiciary where they interact with the executive branch-for example, reviewing congressional oversight functions, examining the control wielded by the Supreme Court on government structure, and profiling the agencies under the administrative control of Congress. It examines the social, cultural, and intellectual movements that have influenced the way America is governed, and looks closely at American bureaucracy-what it is, how it is controlled, and how new technologies have influenced it. The guide is accessibly written for a broad audience and arranged in convenient A to Z format.

IRBs under the microscope.

IRBs Under the Microscope Jonathan D. Moreno (bio) The spring and summer of 1998 were seasons in the sun for institutional review board (IRB) aficionados. Rarely have the arcana of the local human subjects review panels been treated to so much attention in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, not only at the federal but also at the state level. And it looks as if the attention will continue for some time. The spate of interest is due to a series of coincidences: a powerful House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings after its chairman learned about the IRB system during a previous session on research in underdeveloped communities; the Department of Health and Human Services’s Inspector General (DHHS-IG) released a report on IRBs; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research completed a report on clinical trial monitoring; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) readied a report on research involving persons with mental disorders; the states of Maryland and New York completed studies of research with subjects who lack decision-making capacity; and advocacy groups protested a psychiatric research project involving inner city children. Underlying these proximate causes for the IRB blitz is a growing realization that the already considerable clinical trial enterprise will expand significantly over the next few years. Congress is talking about giving the politically popular NIH half again the budget it currently receives, which in turn will stimulate more commercially supported research. The director of the National Cancer Institute is considering a five-fold increase in the number of subjects enrolled in oncology studies over the next several years. Phase I cancer studies are among the most ethically sensitive, so IRBs will have more work cut out for them if this goal is reached. Adding to the rush of interest in IRBs are the government’s recent apology to the survivors of the syphilis study in Tuskegee, continuing congressional dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon handled its vaccine distribution during the Gulf War, and the controversy about AZT trials in developing countries. On the Hill Congressman Christopher Shays, the moderate Connecticut Republican who has developed an interest in human research issues, convened hearings on human [End Page 329] subjects research and the IRB system on 11 June 1998. Shays chairs the House Government Reform/Human Resources Subcommittee. The committee’s ranking minority member is Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn, NY, who shares Shays’s interest in this area. The immediate rationale for the hearings was the release that day of the DHHS-IG report, Institutional Review Boards: A Time for Reform. The subtitle was changed from A System in Jeopardy apparently after some people in DHHS expressed reservations about its seemingly alarmist tone, but the IG staffers who testified before Shays’s subcommittee insisted that they stood behind the message that the IRB system is in trouble if considerable reforms are not undertaken. Among the factors in the research environment cited as support for the bleak forecast: managed care, commercialization, multi-site trials, high IRB workloads, minimal IRB oversight of approved studies, conflicts of interest, insufficient training of IRB members and investigators, and lack of IRB self-studies (DHHS-IG 1998). As is normally the case for congressional oversight hearings, the first panel of witnesses consisted of executive branch officials, including Eric Meslin, Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Gary Ellis, Director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR). Shays pressed Ellis on the extent to which OPRR conducts on-site investigations of complaints about abuse of human subjects. Admitting that on-site investigations are rare, Ellis suggested that the agency is inadequately staffed to follow up on complaints as quickly as it might wish. The members of Congress who were present at the hearings generally expressed concern about the DHHS-IG’s findings. The second panel that day, which Shays was unable to attend, set a different tone. Four of the panelists—Paul Appelbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, Robert Levine of Yale University, Angela Bowen of the Western IRB (a private clinical trials review firm), and I—were invited as authorities on the current condition of the IRB system. Bert Spilker...

Iran‐contra and congressional oversight of the CIA

Iran‐contra and congressional oversight of the CIA

Sharing Isn't Easy: When Separate Institutions Clash

There is a lively debate in the United States about how the president and Congress do and ought to relate, and about the significance of recent clashes between the two over control of the bureaucracy. This article focuses on the causes and consequences of increased congressional (and presidential) review and specification of administrative behavior. It examines congressional oversight behavior, micromanagement by Congress, struggles over control of regulations and interpretations of statutes, and efforts by the White House to increase its control over appointments to executive positions. The article concludes with an overview of the sources of tension between the two institutions and an analysis of the conditions under which they could more successfully share power.

Preventing scientific misconduct.

When a case of serious scientific misconduct comes to light, reactions from scientists, legislators, journal editors, and the press are often swift and impassioned, reflecting the importance of a problem that strikes at the heart of the scientific enterprise. Science, after all, is a search for the truth. Misconduct, especially in the form of falsification or fabrication, is its antithesis. Biomedical science seems especially vulnerable to the serious consequences forecast by those involved in the extended discussion: Congressional oversight could become a reality, public trust could fray, and perhaps most ominous of all, patients could be harmed. Few authors agree on the frequency of scientific misconduct, owing to differing definitions and difficulties in measurement. Estimates vary widely. Nevertheless, nearly everyone agrees that preventing scientific misconduct is a worthy goal. How best to achieve that goal is not so clear. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the prevention of scientific misconduct based on models familiar to public health professionals, to discuss some problems that emerge from such an analysis, and to propose tentative solutions to those problems. I begin with two questions: What is scientific misconduct, and how much of it exists?

Defense environmental legislation in the 104th congress—a retrospective

AbstractThis article axamines Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Energy (DOE) envirobnmental activities and fundig within the context of the four pillars of the National Security strategy of the Republican 10th Congress: improving the quality of life for service members; sustaining core readiness capability; revitalizing weapons modernization; and reforming the Pentagon bureaucracy. This article shows how initial skepticism by the new Republican congressional leaders toward DOD and DOE environmental programs gave way to a recognition of the legitimacy of Environmental requirements, the potential contribution that environmental programs coould make to increased quality of life and long‐term readiness, and, most importantly, the realization that increased support of environmental programs was a political imperative to preseve Republican control of Congress. Consequently, the focus shifted from opposition to environment spending to more constructive efforts aimed at increasing cost effectivedness and improving management of DOD and DOE environmental programs, while minimizing potential negative impacts on operational needs. The author is cautiously optimistic the this record of constructive congressional oversight of defense environmental programs will continue in the 15th Congress.

Biennial Budgeting in the Federal Government

This article examines the possible outcomes of changing from the current annual budget review to biennial budgeting. It looks at the experience of various states and its application to the federal level. It explores all of the supposed benefits, including less time spent on budgeting issues, more accurate budget projections, reduction of congressional workload and increased congressional oversight and, for the president's point of view, increased power of the executive branch. Concluding on a cautious note, the article offers some plausible applications of biennial budgeting to the national budget.

Federal regulation of the nonprofit world: From congressional oversight to “intermediate sanctions”

AbstractA former representative calls for Congress and nonprofits to work together to correct weak enforcement of laws that affect tax‐exempt organizations.

Congressional oversight committee influence on U.S. monetary policy revisited

Grier (1991) shows that monetary policy is influenced by Congress in that increases in the liberality of the Senate Banking Committee leadership are significantly positively correlated with monetary base growth. Chopin, Cole, and Ellis (1996) claim that the House leadership statistically dominates the Senate leadership for predicting money growth, but that the direction of the effect is perverse: a more liberal House leadership is associated with a lower rate of base growth. In this paper, I show that Chopin, Cole, and Ellis's claims are unfounded. Properly measured, both House and Senate leadership have a significant positive effect on base growth over Grier's (1991) original sample. In later periods, money growth regressions are not sufficiently stable to support hypothesis tests.

Congressional influence on U.S. monetary policy: A reconsideration of the evidence

One of the few works that finds strong evidence of congressional influence on U.S. monetary policy is Grier (1991), which finds a direct relationship between the liberalism of the Senate oversight committee leadership and monetary base growth. We extend this analysis by considering a longer sample period and by considering the preferences of House oversight committee leaders, in addition to Senators. Grier's evidence is not robust to these extensions. Where we do find correlation between congressional preferences and monetary base growth, increased liberalism of congressional oversight committees is associated with lower monetary base growth.